True, but it’s perhaps related to Jay’s testimony.
I don’t think this is strong evidence. If you go through all the notes of any random teenager back then (when more notes were taken on paper), you’re going to find something that is in some way incriminating.
If anything, I think her diary points more towards him being innocent. I would expect way more ill will and talk about violent outbursts and such, if it was a diary featuring a murderer.
This is nothing. They were together for many months, of course his fingerprints are on some of the stuff.
Or he could’ve been a number of other places, right? Given the cell tower location technology.
In absence of Jay’s testimony, it has no significance.
Of course you are going to say something that a cop trying to prosecute you will critique. Given that, this is mild.
Not good evidence that he is a murderer.
Was it a testimony, or was it something she said 15 years later, when her mind could have completely reshaped and colored the events?
Etc etc. I don’t think any points on this list (except the first) is good evidence for guilt if he is fully innocent.
I actually also think the phone was there. Seems like someone would’ve pointed it out if it wasn’t.
All you are doing is pointing out that damning circumstantial evidence can have an theoretical innocuous explanation. That is why it’s circumstantial. One issue could be brushed off, but not 20+ items in addition to Jay’s testimony.
No, its not just that I think they can have an innocuous explanation, its that I think they are innocuous (most of them). Like they are so commonplace that they would happen to any innocent person.
I think the kid in Twelve Angry Men is certainly guilty because of the same type of argument you use here (that multiple lines of evidence add up), which interestingly people mostly do not agree with. So I agree with that way of looking at it. I just dont think a lot of really weak indicators add up to that much.
We have no idea where or when the murder took place. The entire police theory is built on the bogus 2.36 phone call being Adnan calling Jay to be picked up at Best Buy. However Jay had originally said Adnan called at 3.45 but no such incoming call exists so it had to be the 2.36 call. It can’t be the 3.15 call because Jay’s testimony makes that impossible. But several witnesses say Hae was at school too late to be murdered by 2.36. The Baltimore Sun has a gallery of the orignal news pieces. In those the Baltimore police state that Hae was seen leaving the school at 3.00.
In the initial pieces Hae’s car, which was a recent model, is described and the registration given. We only have Jay’s testimony that it was dumped on the day that Hae disappeared. I wonder whether this was confirmed after the car was found? It seems surprising that no-one noticed it for weeks.
I’m also a bit concerned about brickbacon’s “evidence.” On the basis of things like:
Yeah. It just seems odd that it was all in the public eye and no-one spotted the car. It may be just me but I would actively keep an eye out for a car mentioned in a missing persons report.
A couple of weeks ago I was driving around for a day or two with a plate number in my head that I knew the police were looking for.
The car is starting to bug me now. As I said earlier, if the police really had been looking all over for it, and not found it, they couldn’t have been looking that hard, since it was parked close to Leaking Park. Another thing (although this could be nothing) is how Jay could be so sure that it was even still there. A nice car, parked in shady area of Baltimore for weeks? Sounds like it might at least be conceivable that someone would hot wire it and take off with it. But when the police asks Jay to take them there, he doesn’t hesitate or say “well, if it’s still there”. It’s just “yes, no problem”. It sounds a bit like the cops told him “we’re going to go to a location, and you’ll point at a car”.
I’m not concerned about Chris. If I remember correctly, he’s recounting what Jay told him, and it’s much later. He could be wrong about when Jay told him the story. Maybe it was after the police had already talked to Jay.
Jen, however, does bother me. Jen is probably the biggest problem of all. Forget the Nisha call. Forget the cell records. Those can be explained away if Jay is making his story up wholesale (or even if he isn’t). But I can’t see why Jen would lie to the police, especially that early in the investigation. And there’s obviously no reason for Jay to tell her what he did on the 13th, if he wasn’t involved with the murder. He wouldn’t yet know that there was a murder to make up stories about. So, yeah. For any hypothetical scenario where neither Adnan or Jay are involved, Jen is the show stopper.
I disagree. How many innocent people lend their car and brand new phone to a casual acquaintance admittedly involved in a murder of someone that acquaintance barely knows but that you do know well? How many write, “I’m going to kill” on a letter from an ex who was subsequently murdered that accuses you of being possessive and substantiates a clear motive for murder? How many people’s close friends and family tell cops who they know suspect you of murder that you talked about how you would get rid of evidence from a murder of an ex you committed, or that you are a masterful liar? Yes, the map could be innocuous (although who keeps a map in their trunk), but it’s likely not given other circumstantial evidence. That doesn’t ALL happen to innocent people.
I again disagree. The vast majority of murder cases have NO physical evidence. The conviction rate is usually in the 90%+ range. Clearly, people feel no compunction about convicting someone based on circumstantial evidence and direct testimony as we have in this case.
Do you know how many missing person reports there were in a city like Baltimore in the 90’s? People don’t look out for missing cars, and there was some possibility the car wasn’t anywhere near Baltimore. This case was not in the public eye. Try to find articles or info about this case pre-Serial. There are maybe 5 articles in only Baltimore papers. This wasn’t the OJ case. This was also pre-amber alert, so people didn’t think to insinuate themselves in crime solving like some do now.
Nice thing to do I guess, but that is not the norm even today.
Jay told the cops he told Chris at the time. There is little reason to doubt Chris’s memory.
On the grounds that we now able to examine evidence without the police leading us down the garden path of their choosing.
This is not a case involving finding motives behind why the jury concluded what they concluded and how quickly they did so. Juries make mistakes. Legal counsel is sometimes incompetent. Judges often disinterested or over-worked. It’s an imperfect system. Shining a new light on the evidence ought not include “but the jury thought he was guilty in record time!” as part of that evidence.
No single item above means he did it because there is a plausable and reasonable explanation for virtually all of them other than: therefore he did it. There is no trail of evidence based on above. It’s a scatter plot. That the judge took so little interest in the case while hearing it is more concerning to me than what a jury of amateurs concluded in record time.
His lawyer seemed less than competent. The cops were busy building a case and had little motivation to include evidence that undermined that case.
I’m trying not to become too voyeuristic about this whole thing, but… oh, the fuck am I kidding, I’m not really trying.
I came across this on Reddit. Some old news footage about the case. There’s a clip that claims to be from a short interview with Hae, apparantly from some unrelated local TV news report. You can watch her play lacrosse for a few seconds, too.
Is that really her? I didn’t really imagine her like that, even from the photos.
That is completely speculative and even if it were true, it would have no legal weight.
You misunderstood. You said there was insufficient evidence for conviction. That is a claim that is evaluated by a judge, DA, police, and a jury. All of whom upon hearing more evidence than 9 hours of a podcast determined there was. Your opinion in that matter is based on almost nothing.
Sure, the juries have made mistakes. There is no evidence they did here though.
It’s part of the evidence that undermines your claim that their is not suffient evidence or that there is no evidence of his guilt.
Look up the definition of circumstantial evidence. Again, it’s not that those things couldn’t happen to you or I, it’s that ALL of them happening to someone whose ex was murdered while he was completely uninvolved and unaware is highly, highly unlikely. It would be like winning 40 blackjack hands in a row. The casino would naturally be convinced you were cheating.
Sure there is. It’s make even more explicit via Jay’s testimony.
So now the judge is bad too? I guess everyone but Adnan is corrupt, lying, out to get him, etc.
How do you I so is lawyer was incompetent? For all we know Adnan could have confessed to her. You listened to less than 9 hours of a show and you think that gives you enough evidence to impune everyone involved in this case from Jenn to the judge? At what point do the mental gymnastics you’ve performed to conclude Adnan didn’t do it because he’s a “nice guy” run into the cold reality that you are slandering multiple people with serious accusations?
Well, some of the people who are being slandered here have already shown themselves to be not exactly the Virgin Mary.
Obviously, we know Jay was lying, at least about some things. He changed his story about six times.
We have reason to suspect police corruption. Detective Ritz was later involved in a case of serious police misconduct, where a man was exonerated after spending ten years in prison for murder.
We have reason to think that the investigation was sloppy. Evidence found at the crime scene was not tested, etc.
We have reason to question how great a job Adnan’s lawyer, Cristina Gutierrez, did, and to suspect that she bungled the case, on purpose or otherwise. She was later disbarred for mishandling her client’s money.
That people tell the cops that they suspect him of murder is obviously a strong argument. It is also pretty much the only strong argument. For the rest of the points I still think they are almost irrelevant, for the reasons I stated above.
At no time did I say that I think Adnan is innocent because he’s a “nice guy”. I said that I believe there is insufficient evidence to convict him or murder. For all I know, he may be guilty. For all you know, Jay may be guilty.
In addition, a reputable team of Innocence Project lawyers seem to agree with the fact that the evidence was insufficient to convict.
I will go through them 1 by 1 and evaluate how unlikely I think it is, in a scenario where Adnan is completely innocent.
“lend their car and brand new phone to a casual acquaintance”
Unlikeliness : 2/10
I think that happened all the time in this environment. If you have some arguments that this was not the case I could take it up again. Casual acquaintance seems to also understate things, given that we at least knew they hung out somewhat regularly.
“admittedly involved in a murder of someone that acquaintance barely knows but that you do know well?”
Unlikeliness: 9/10
“How many write, “I’m going to kill” on a letter from an ex”
Unlikeliness: 2
I think if you go through every single note from any innocent teenager, you are going to find something that is at least this discriminating.
“who was subsequently murdered that accuses you of being possessive and substantiates a clear motive for murder?”
Unlikeliness: N/A
I disagree with this. I think that her accusations were extremely mild, and I don’t think there was a motive for murder, and it was definitely not substantiated.
“Yes, the map could be innocuous (although who keeps a map in their trunk), but it’s likely not given other circumstantial evidence.”
Unlikeliness: 1
Innocuous things that suddenly become damning just because there is other circumstantial evidence against someone. Then everyone would be guilty once you start accusing them, due to roll-on effect of a multitude of small random things.
True, but he was also know he told the truth about many things, so we can’t throw out everything he says.
I agree, but how much evidence do we have for those suspicions? If he was that corrupt, don’t you think he would have not recording Jay’s multiple conflicting stories?
Not testing “evidence” is very common and not usually an indication of sloppiness at all. Mostly because anything near or around the crime scene is not real evidence.
So mishandling money means you purposefully bungled a case?
How is the victim of a murder writing you a scathing letter saying you are possessive and taking their breakup particularly hard not pretty good circumstantial evidence?
But you have not heard all the evidence, so how can you be at all certain?
They are law STUDENTS taking a class at UVA save the professor. They are also reading transcripts 15 years after the fact. Being at the trial means a lot given lots of information is not conveyed via a transcript. That like looking at a box score to tell you how exciting a baseball game was.